Editor’s note: The following essay was composed by Joe Gersten during his incarceration at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center. It is printed here unedited. Much has been said about the “Gersten Case,” yet it surprises me when my own friends fail to understand why I am sitting here in…
The nation ringing in the Clinton administration is, by several measures, a healthier and more health-conscious nation than it was when Ronald Reagan took office. Americans exercise more, eat less fat, drink less alcohol, and smoke less tobacco than they did a dozen years ago. Public awareness campaigns, strong leadership…
Preservationists in Dade are a determined but weary bunch. For years they have raged A often in vain A at the demise of historic building after historic building, their valiant appeals drowned out by the crash of the wrecking ball. This past month they again mustered their strength in an…
Last Monday, April 5, the Florida Marlins baseball team played its first regular-season major league game. The contest took place at Joe Robbie Stadium in North Dade, home of the Marlins and the Miami Dolphins. The Marlins were victorious, defeating Los Angeles Dodgers by a score of 6-3. Before the…
In Clint Clark’s neighborhood, they call it “jacking a tourist.” The J-T for short. The media have branded the crime a “smash-and-grab.” It boils down to the same thing: detaining a car full of tourists and then robbing them. To fourteen-year-old Clark the J-T is an everyday occurrence, something friends…
The big jet from Frankfurt, Germany, dropped gently through vaporous clouds to the runway at Miami International Airport, and Kurt Schafer’s heart raced for a few seconds as he wondered, again, if the threats had been serious. Somebody was going to pocket $10,000 for shooting him as he disembarked; at…
In late 1991, when Metro-Dade Police Sgt. David Simmons was assigned to investigate the latest child abuse allegations lodged against physicians Lisette and Andres Nogues, his colleague Det. Ellen Christopher issued an ambivalent sigh. On the one hand, she was thrilled an officer as competent as Simmons had inherited the…
Take a look at the new MacArthur Causeway now. It’s fast and smooth, for sure. Plenty of room to maneuver through rush hour at velocities well over the 30 mph speed limit. It’s also about as boring as a stretch of asphalt can get: all road with just a strip…
People still ask me about my car, the little red Sentra that was totaled as it sat parked outside my apartment in the rain one early morning in November. An off-duty Miami Beach police officer plowed into it. I wrote about the whole experience in the January 20 issue of…
Human beings have, for good reason, spent a considerable amount of their history figuring out ways to hide their excrement. In fact, several good reasons, reasons so small you need high-powered microscopes to see them. Behold, for instance, shigellae. Resembling a tiny ice-cream sprinkle, this bacterium is among scores of…
The airwaves beckon. Yet we are captives on the Venetian Causeway. Locked in traffic and reduced to soothing our frayed nerves straight from a bottle. Our larger half, Jim, is not one to obey gridlock protocol. His faded red Mazda lurches left, then right. Soon we are slaloming through the…
In the arcane world of modern hydraulics and flush toilets, there is one widely held assumption: what goes down will stay down. You answer the call of nature, push the handle, and keep on walking. Few care to dwell on what happens next, and fewer still care to talk about…
Adam Von Furstenberg remembers seeing the hypodermic needle taped to his right arm pop upright like a jack-in-the-box and knowing he was in big trouble. The machine that was supposed to be converting his blood from HIV-positive to HIV-negative had malfunctioned. Rather than returning ozone-treated blood to his body, the…
Inside the minuscule Indian Creek Village Hall, some 30 tense bodies were crammed, and more spilled onto the outdoor walkway. Elderly residents dressed in the fashion of twenty years ago. Lawyers in staid suits. Scruffy reporters and even a television news crew, much to the horror of a community that…
At nine o’clock sharp on Wednesday, February 24, Norman Braman strolled into Indian Creek Village’s teensy town hall to address his esteemed council. In an unprompted, five-minute soliloquy, the millionaire auto salesman paid homage to the ultra-exclusive isle on which he had settled eighteen months ago. The crown jewel of…
In the few maps that record South Florida before the era of dredge-and-plat, Indian Creek Village survives as an obscure speck of land off the northern tip of Miami Beach. Originally earmarked to become part of a much larger manmade island, the islet was instead remodeled into a free-floating country…
A friend A I’ll call him Alex A phoned to warn me before I read it. Though at the time, I didn’t understand the call to be a warning. The year was 1985, and Alex was calling from Wisconsin to tell me that a mutual acquaintance had just published a…
Winston Churchill said it best: “Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous.” Miami’s most venerable political consultant, Phil Hamersmith, has a new appreciation for the British statesman’s pithy observation. And he gained it just in time to carry his battlefield injury into this week’s elections. The…
A minister, a rabbi, and an attorney are swimming in the ocean. A shark comes along and swallows up the rabbi. A second shark moves in and gobbles the minister. A third shark approaches, sniffs the attorney, and swims off. Why? Professional courtesy. It’s really not so difficult to hate…
“I think this will be the most important vote people will make in a long time. You only get one vote, folks. There are no latitudes for mistakes.” A Joe Gersten, 1/14/93, Government Cut Political Club Next week a revolution will take place. A political system is being opened to…
Rebar at four in the morning and a night of heroic drinking with club promoter Michael Capponi, the twenty-year-old prince of South Beach, is winding down. The place is packed, grunge rock pounding over the sound system, a madhouse of lust and degeneracy. A Saudi fighter pilot earnestly raves about…
Later they would play Candyland. Later, too, they would eat homemade muffins and frolic with the anatomically correct dolls. But first, four-year-old Donna had to practice. That was what her therapist, Miss Suzanne, told her. Over and over again. Because this wasn’t just any rehearsal. Tomorrow Donna (which is not…
